scholarly journals ‘Milksops’ and ‘Bemedalled Old Men’: War Veterans and the War Youth Generation in the Weimar Republic

Fascism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-41
Author(s):  
Kristian Mennen
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Collective Imagination ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Old Men ◽  
First World

This article reconsiders traditional assumptions about the connection between the First World War and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, according to which politically radicalised war veterans joined the Freikorps after the war and formed the backbone of the Nazi membership and electorate. In questioning this view, the article first traces the political paths of actual veterans’ organisations. Whereas the largest veterans’ organisations were not politically active, the most distinctive ones – Reichsbanner and Stahlhelm – were not primarily responsible for a ‘brutalisation’ or radicalisation of Weimar political culture. Their definitions of ‘veteran’ and ‘front experience’ implicitly excluded the so-called ‘war youth generation’ from their narrative. Secondly, it is shown how representatives of this younger generation, lacking actual combat experience but moulded by war propaganda, determined the collective imagination of the First World War. The direct connection between the First World War and National Socialism can therefore primarily be found in the continuity of public and cultural imagination of war and of ‘war veterans’, and much less so in actual membership overlaps between veterans’ and Nazi movements.

A Linguistic Hermeneutic Approach to Paul Rohrbach's Kriegsbotschaften

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-130
Author(s):  
Felicity Rash
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
World War ◽  
South West ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Discourse Strategies ◽  
South West Africa ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
First World

This paper applies the methods of linguistic hermeneutics devised by Wengeler (2005) to the pre- and early First World War propaganda essays of Paul Rohrbach. The analysis illustrates the discourse strategies and rhetoric of this staunchly nationalist German writer who was also Settlement Commissioner to German South-West Africa between 1903 and 1906. The texts are good examples of German nationalist propaganda of the Second Empire and were widely read at the time of their publication and afterwards. Their influence is likely to have extended to the period after the First World War, when National Socialism was inchoate.

“The Methods of Barbarism” and the “Rights of Small Nations”: War Propaganda and British Pluralism

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Use Of Force ◽  
First World War ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
World War ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Liberal Vision ◽  
First World

The “methods of barbarism” and the “rights of small nations” are perhaps the most recognizable of British slogans arising out of the wars of the early twentieth century. They are instantly associated with the Boer War and the First World War respectively, but seldom are they associated with each other. However, the Pro-Boer rhetoric of “the methods of barbarism” and the First World War propaganda of “the rights of small nations” are intimately linked through their roots in the pluralist Liberal vision of Britishness.These slogans and the propaganda campaigns that they epitomized must be understood within the context of a multicultural Britain and opposing notions of British national identity. Defining “barbarism” as the oppression of small nations through the brutal use of force, the Pro-Boers associated the term with the Anglocentric vision of the British nation reflected in the “New Imperialism” of the Conservatives. Through their belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, the Conservative imperialists maintained that small nations like those of the Irish, the Welsh, and the Boers would either be assimilated or swept aside by the historical progress of an expanding Anglo-Saxon nation state. In contrast to this notion of Conservative “barbarism,” the Pro-Boer Liberals drew on the Gladstonian heritage of their party in defining the United Kingdom as a multinational state at the center of a multinational empire. They eschewed the use of force in the maintenance of empire and argued that the bonds of imperialism must be based upon mutual goodwill, voluntarism, and the recognition of the principle of nationality.When the First World War broke out in 1914, propagandists drew upon these contrasting constructions of Liberal cultural pluralism and Conservative cultural uniformity. In terms similar to those employed by the Pro-Boers, British propagandists depicted the First World War as a struggle against German “barbarism” and as a fight to vindicate the “rights of small nations.” Solidly based upon the Liberal construction of the multicultural and multinational nature of Britishness, Britain's role as the champion of the principle of nationality was proclaimed with an eye not only to the international context of Europe but to the domestic context of the British state and empire as well.

scholarly journals The Memory of the First World War and the Key Problems of the French Foreign Policy during the Inter-war Period in the Reflection of the Journal “La Revue des Vivants”.

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-45
Author(s):  
Mariya K. Medvedeva
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
International System ◽  
First World War ◽  
Social Orientation ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
French Foreign Policy ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

The article analyses the French journal “La Revue des Vivants” (1927–1935) as a source of studying the history of the Inter-war period. This journal, created by the veterans of the First World War, who at the same time represented the French intellectual elites, presents a unique combination of their war experience and current political agenda. The author examines three main subjects that characterized the political and social orientation of this journal. Firstly, its publishers and authors were deeply influenced by the First World War and its consequences. Its experience forced them to seek a better international system, where the repeat of such conflict would be impossible. This leads to the second subject, the European integration and the frame it was supposed to set. The idea of the united Europe was connected with the third subject, the relations with Germany, which could be successful only as a part of an international organization. The analysis of all these subjects brings a contradictory conclusion: despite all progressive and forward-thinking ideas of this journal, its publishers and authors failed to understand some important tendencies of their time (for example, the nature and the origins of the national socialism). However, this conclusion only confirms the nature of the Inter-war period as a time of many different ideologies and ideas and opens new perspectives of its studying.

scholarly journals Scandal in Mesopotamia: Press, empire, and India during the First World War

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 1395-1445
Author(s):  
MANU SEHGAL ◽  
SAMIKSHA SEHRAWAT
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
British Press ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
First World

AbstractBy providing the first comprehensive account of the role of the British and Indian press in war propaganda, this article makes an intervention in the global history of the First World War. The positive propaganda early in the war, intertwined with a rhetoric of loyalism, contrasted with how the conservative British press affixed blame for military defeats in Mesopotamia upon the colonial regime's failure to effectively mobilize India's resources. Using a highly emotive and enduring trope of the ‘Mesopotamia muddle’, the Northcliffe press was successful in channelling a high degree of public scrutiny onto the campaign. The effectiveness of this criticism ensured that debates about the Mesopotamian debacle became a vehicle for registering criticism of structures of colonial rule and control in India. On the one hand, this critique hastened constitutional reforms and devolution in colonial India and, on the other, it led to demands that the inadequacy of India's contribution to the war be remedied by raising war loans. Both the colonial government and its nationalist critics were briefly and paradoxically united in opposing these demands. The coercive extraction of funds for the imperial war effort as well as the British press's vituperative criticism contributed to a post-war, anti-colonial political upsurge. The procedure of creating a colonial ‘scandal’ out of a military disaster required a specific politics for assessing the regulated flows of information, which proved to be highly effective in shaping both the enquiry that followed and the politics of interwar colonial South Asia.

scholarly journals Croatian Interwar Cultural Memory and Disabled War Veterans

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-211
Author(s):  
Sandra Cvikić ◽  
◽  
Ljiljana Dobrovšak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
First World War ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
World War ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

In the contemporary international scholarly community cultural memory related to the First World War as a research field and subject area is extensively problematized and studied by social sciences and humanities. Based on the available surveyed scholarly production, it is evident that Croatian cultural memory of the First World War is an under-researched subject. This paper therefore presents preliminary findings of conducted qualitative sociological research into the development of the post-First World War cultural memory in Croatia in the interwar period. The research provides an insight into how Croatian disabled war veterans (de)constructed post-war cultural memory inside a newly formed multiethnic state of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and to which extent it was connected to national and ethnic. The discourse and discursive practices developed by Croatian disabled war veterans are analyzed in selected newspapers (Nezavisnost, Hrvatski invalid, Ratni invalid, Vojni invalid) published in the period 1920–1924. The article uses post-modernist sociological fallibilistic Foucauldian methodology of discourse analysis and Foucault’s understanding of modernist societies, which is based on the research into how the language appropriates specific discourses developed by certain groups in addition to the prevalent discursive practices. Both methodology and theory are used to explain the findings in the framework of what Wolfgang Schivelbusch calls ‘culture of defeat’. The research concludes that difficult post-war political, social and economic circumstances profoundly shaped the way in which the collective memory of the First World War was (de)constructed by post-war disabled veterans in Croatia and subsequently induced collective amnesia thus helping to create the culture of forgetting.

scholarly journals Letters of Orthodox Priests about the German Occupation of Estonia during the First World War

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Paert ◽  
James M. White
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Main Complaint ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
The One ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
First World

During the invasion of the Baltic provinces between 1915 and 1918, a large swathe of territory and its population fell under German control: this included Orthodox parishes and their priests. The clergy and laity thus had to face many new challenges: the behaviour of occupation forces, material deprivations, and the actions of Lutheran clerical and secular elites in the new context. This article focuses on the response to the advance of the German armies in 1915 and 1916 into the Baltic. On the one hand, the article addresses the preparation and execution of the evacuation of the clergy and the rhetoric that underpinned the process of evacuation. On the other hand, it examines the problem of the church life under occupation. As evident from the sermons and articles published in the ecclesiastical press, the Germans represented a major threat to the Orthodox faith, clergy, and church property. Thus most Orthodox institutions were evacuated from the Baltic in 1915. Finally, the article discusses the position of the Orthodox Church during German occupation of the Estonian islands seized by the imperial German navy on 3 November 1917 from the perspective of parish priests. The article is based on the letters written by priests to the bishop of Riga and provides a complex picture of the German occupation, much of which differs from the representation of Germans in Russian war propaganda. Most priests represented the German forces as being relatively respectful towards churches and the clergy: their main complaint against the soldiers was the seizure of food, horses, and property, with the concomitant disruptions and discomforts this caused. The more serious threat to Orthodoxy, according to this evidence, came not from Germans but from the Lutheran clergy, who allegedly used the opportunity afforded by the invasion to undermine the Orthodox Church’s position. This publication will provide a unique insight into religion under occupation during the First World War, revealing the difficulties of maintaining everyday religious life in a multiconfessional region during and after invasion.

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